News for Friday, 1 February 2008

Microsoft has launched an unsolicited acquisition proposal targeting Yahoo and aiming to take control of the web portal company. Yahoo board acknowledges to have received the proposal and announces to be careful reviewing it. Microsoft would pay 31 USD per Yahoo share, a 62% premium over the closing price from Thursday at 19.18 USD.
It clearly indicates that previous Microsoft strategy to counter attack Google failed, and that Redmond's giant decided to acquire Yahoo to use it as the basis in its fight against Google.
For sure the web will change, and a new chapter of its history is going to be written.

Rogue Amoeba yesterday released since AirFoil 3.0
This tool is a must-have for any Macuser (or even Windows User, as a Windows version will follow) who uses Airport Express terminal (s) connected to a stereo to broadcast the audio of any application running on the computer.
The main developments of the tool over previous versions are really cool:
1 - now the sound of the selected application can be distributed not only via Airtunes to a stereo connected to an AirportExpress terminal, but also on any Mac with an Airport card in real time , when you install a small application that comes with AirFoil 3 (and start it). The Mac source of course can also be the target of the audio distribution.
2 - AirFoil now includes a video player capable of playing not only any video on the Mac, but also a DVDVideo, disseminating synchronised audio/image via AirTunes.

MacOS X really lacks such a tool for using AirTunes because neither iTunes (video clips do not broadcast the audio via AirTunes), nor DVD Player, nor FrontRow use AirTunes to distribute the sound of videos (probably Apple did not want to bother with synching sound / image)
However, it appears that under Leopard, AirFoil cannot "hijack" the new FrontRow that remains totally non "Airtunable", included for audio dissemination when accessing the iTunes library ....

In January, Apple was quite busy with a lot of product announcements: Mac Pro, MacBook Air, Time Capsule, video rental offer on iTunes...
To maintain the buzz related to Apple-branded products, and keep news networks speaking about them, Apple might have delayed the release of the Penryn transition for some of its hardware models.
One of our sources reports that new products will most likely be launch on February 12th, and it should be the new MacBook Pro.

Arasp, one of our French forum members, purchases a Mac Pro rev2 and its Radeon HD 2600 XT. He wanted to get a second one, so he gave it a try and purchased a Radeon HD 2600 for PC.
Once installed in the second PCI Express 16x slot, when displaying information about the system it shows:

The PC graphic card, a model from Sapphire, is recognized as the Radeon HD 2600 Mac Edition pre-installed in the Mac! We still have a doubt, as the system might have loaded the graphic card ROM only once for both cards. Nevertheless this is an interesting news, especially for those aiming to install 2 graphic card for setting up a multiple display system.

If broadband ADSL is becoming the default type of connection for getting access to internet, optical fiber is becoming a serious competitor as it allows higher transfer speed as well as longer effective range from the central server.
However, a new technology for broadband ADSL might allow ISPs to further boost their ADSL offer and performance, while giving them more time to develop their expensive optical fiber infrastructures. The company Rim Semiconductor claims to have designed new chips able to reach 40 Mbits/s, and even more impressive such transfer speed could be maintained till 1.7km from the central server. First trials have been launched in Oregon, USA.
This technology might be the way to bring broadband internet to all citizen, even those located far away from the central server.

If you wondered how Apple managed to make the MacBook Air so thin, here are two photos:
The first is of the 1.8" hard disk with its ZIF connector. It is placed in a frame with tthe motherboard fitted in the notch that one can see on the left.
The second more interesting photo is of the mother board. The smallest chip on the upper left is the processor, while the larger one next to it is the chipset that contains the integrated video. One can see in the lower middle the chips of non-removable RAM.
The integration is incredibly compressed, and this mother board must contain many layers of circuits which must push the price upwards.

Dave Zeiler of the Baltimore Sun has received his new Mac Pro. Like all who have ordered this type of machine, he bought the memory elsewhere and also two additional Seagate 500 GB hard disks. Like many of those receiving this kind of machine, his first game was to launch benchmark software to give one the pleasure in power of the machine. He was surprised to find that the original hard disk fitted by Apple- the 320 GB from Seagate - was 30% slower! The benchmark score with the 320 GB disks was even slower than a previous generation Mac Pro also fitted with 320 GB disks.
The reason for this lack of performance is simple. Apple has economized in places that are not easily seen and there is no reason to stop at this point; all manufacturers do the same. Be warned: if you want to get the best out of one of these machines, fit the fastest possible disk drive right from the beginning. In this field the best of the class are SAS disks, but to install them it is necessary to get a Apple RAID card, a 710 euro option. The Western Digital Raptor is the best solution with the best ratio of quality to price; however nowadays there are also 1 TB hard disks that have equivalent read/write speeds. However the access times are longer and it is probably this that has the biggest influence on the speed of the system.